Category: Uncategorized

A brief round up of the many platform AI announcements, as well as the implications of TikTok expanding its partnership with Ticketmaster, and a look at Reddit’s latest updates.

Generative AI Round-up

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to follow the multiple announcements coming from platforms around their Generative AI integrations. Indeed, numerous platforms have been working on their AI game this week, a few highlights as follows:

Meta is adding AI-generated post prompts and images – while I don’t expect this to replace the current approach at bigger brands, this is likely to go towards reducing the need for smaller firms for external social support. Meta also announced that its latest AI package will make speech translation expressive, factoring in whispers for example.

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is working on a platform which would enable users to create custom AI chatbots.

Microsoft has been talking about its new Deep Search offering, which uses GPT-4 to interpret and expand user queries for more accurate and relevant search results. This type of approach is likely to be copied by other platforms in time. My own view on what this means for marketers remains the same – monitor, and make sure your SEO is on-point, because its increasingly likely that your copy will form the basis of the answers being given to users searching via Generative AI.

TikTok Expands Ticketing Feature

Having initially launched in the US last year, TikTok is expanding its Ticketmaster integration to 20 other markets, including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and many (well, 16) others. While this direct news doesn’t have direct implications for many of the people reading this, what it is a sign of is the increasing growth and expectation from users that they’ll be able to do everything in one app.

For years, apps such as WeChat have been mythologised in the West as platforms where you can pretty much do anything. It feels that as time goes on and with the increasing adoption of social shopping, that we may start to have the same expectations as well.

Reddit Recap & New Ad Placements

Following last week’s much heralded slight changes in colour scheme and font, Reddit had some actual news this week. Firstly, it’s added new elements to its reply stream ad placements, with more flexibility around using images and carousels. I find that Reddit ads are oddly underused by some brands, although I suspect that the previous lack of flexibility with images was part of the problem.

It does however offer high potential for very specific and cost-effective interest-based targeting – sure, there has been some negativity, but I personally find it to be a similar level to Twitter pre-Musk.

Otherwise, Reddit released its 2023 Recap. Apparently in 2023 there was a notable increase in Subreddits devoted to serious, intellectual discussions; the hope here is that this might help a more cerebral type of marketer. I think it’s certainly worth dipping your toe in, but maybe reserve the larger budgets for when you’ve seen some ROI.

Further Reading

Threads is launching in the EU. If you haven’t already thought about where the platform can fit in to your marketing mix, early 2024 poses a good time. My own view is that it isn’t Twitter – we need to see what it becomes before over-committing.

A US-centric study has indicated that brands will place increasing trust and spend with content creators in 2024.

A Spanish media association filed a 550 million euro lawsuit against Meta, citing unfair advantages in the advertising industry. More one to watch with curiosity than expecting anything impactful at this stage.

Ofcom reveals British online habits

Ofcom released its annual Online Nation report this week, detailing how we’re using the Internet in the UK.

To nobody’s surprise, Twitter/X is seeing dwindling use, but it’s not alone – Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest also experienced circa 1.5 million users dropping off. On the other hand, TikTok continues to flourish, with a remarkable YoY increase of 4.6 million users. While I question how many of these are daily active users, it’s another undeniable sign digital marketers cannot ignore it.

Platform usage has also undergone some shifts; despite losing users, those who continue to use Twitter/X are actually spending more time on it, suggesting drop-offs were more casual users. However, other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram did mostly see drops in daily use.

Regarding search, for the third week in a row I’m writing to tell you that Bing is worth watching, with a 13% increase in reach on the previous period, which Ofcom says was driven by Bing AI. Given that 23% of UK internet users said they have used generative AI, that’s probably not a surprise.

But, with all of that said, Google still monsters over everyone else, with 86% usage. Speaking of Google…

Google gives forums an upvote

Google’s latest update has significantly influenced how search results display discussion forums and social media platforms. This directly addresses the growing issue of optimised, machine-generated content that undermines the usefulness of search results. Google wants to prioritise user-generated content and focus on first-person perspectives.

To achieve this, Google has introduced key features such as the “ProfilePage markup” which showcases creator profiles directly in search results, and the “DiscussionForumPosting markup” which enables better recognition and indexing of conversations from online forums and Q&A sites. This aligns with Google’s broader strategy to stay ahead of other platforms during a time when AI tools may disrupt the ecosystem. All of this means it’s going to be a lot more important for brands to monitor Reddit and its peers, as results from here are likelier to usurp other websites.

Otherwise, this week Google’s Public Search Liaision told us that the best way to rank highly on SEO is to focus on user satisfaction, rather than focusing on metadata and other technical aspects. Given that this is what content and SEO-focused marketers have been saying for years, this probably isn’t the silver bullet you were hoping for, but it’s a good way to ensure a good all-round customer experience.

LinkedIn unveils ad platform enhancements

My relationship with LinkedIn’s ads platform has been turbulent. 5-10 years ago it was infuriatingly far behind competitors, and yet the targeting made it an essential part of any B2B marketing mix. Now however the platform has caught up, with features to rival Meta and competitors.

This week it unveiled easier event-tracking via CAPI, a post-GDPR friendly version of the Insight Pixel. This enables you to connect activities on your website with your LinkedIn advertising. Previously to track any button-based (or even non-button) conversions often required tedious event-tracking and time-consuming setup platform-side; now, this has been simplified. If complexity was putting you off from tracking website actions previously, it need not now.

Otherwise it also announced upgrades to its Document Ads this week, enabling people to access whitepapers etc. in-feed, in exchange for a few details. The changes are largely designed to help you with retargeting and moving prospects down the funnel. This is where LinkedIn was once lacking, but now looks increasingly competitive.

Further reading

Reddit announced a major rebrand as it attempts to create distance from the boycotts earlier this year. No doubt a change of font and colour scheme will solve that.

Meta have produced an interesting guide on how to maximise advertising during the post-holiday season (by which they actually mean mid-December to mid-January). 
Finally, there was plenty of AI WTF around this week. Firstly, an agency created an AI model who earns up to $11,000 a month because it was tired of influencers ‘who have egos’. Yikes. Meanwhile, Dazed & Confused (who else) have written a piece studying what happens when people lose their AI girlfriends.

Will the last advertisers to leave X please turn the lights off?

You may have heard news about advertisers fleeing from X. If I’m being honest, from my own experience and also speaking to peers, it feels like most have already fled. However, it seems like Elon Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic tweets has pushed many of the remainers over the edge.

In reality, I suspect the report that Apple ads had run next to pro-Nazi content (a sentence I never thought I’d write) had something more to do with it. Musk is looking to take action against the publishers of that report, but the damage has already been done.

For those who work in digital marketing, this is a further reminder that there are other, more technically stable platforms offering better targeting options, demographic breakdowns and outcomes. Put your ad spend in those. The reality is that from my own experience, Twitter was looking less and less attractive an option even before Musk came in; everything since has very much reinforced that.

Bonus X Content: Marketing “namers” don’t rate the name change. Who would have thought it.

Status Quo at OpenAI

When I said last week to keep an eye on OpenAI and Microsoft, I didn’t exactly picture the chaos that followed. Some people have claimed that it resembles something from Succession; it felt a little more like a farce from Silicon Valley for me… 

In any case, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pretty much back where he started seven days ago – but, in-between, he was forced out by the board, looked set to join OpenAI investors Microsoft, looked likely to be joined by 90% of the OpenAI workforce, and finally has been reinstated back to his original role.

Aside from the drama, the fallout has implications for digital marketers. The experience can only have brought Altman and Microsoft closer together, which goes back to my point about expecting more integrations between OpenAI and Microsoft services. Meanwhile, the fact that a power struggle in a company that a year ago had a fractional share of voice, shows the outsized impact that OpenAI has had on the industry, and why we should be paying attention.

Brandwatch State of Social 2024

Brandwatch unveiled its State of Social 2024 report this week. In a remarkable departure from other trends reports (ahem), it has predicted that AI will be big in 2024 and that social platforms will continue to pursue new features. No, really.

Dedicating 2/3 of the executive summary to these points felt tantamount to asking readers to switch off, but there are some interesting nuggets if you read on.

Firstly, their research indicates that online reviews are increasingly important in consumer decision making (so make sure you’re leveraging them).

Meanwhile, the best day to drive engagement in food services is a Thursday, and indeed brands are most likely to be mentioned on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Women are more likely to discuss brands than Men, while the majority of people talking about consumer tech are Gen Y.

Nothing in this report will be earth shattering, but the vertical breakdown is genuinely interesting, and if you’re a social media manager (or working with one) it’s worth looking up the points salient to your world.

Further Reading:

TikTok is introducing new metrics to better link TikTok ads with conversion data. This is a smart play, and one I’ll be watching with interest.

Meta has improved its Lead Gen forms by offering new features including conditional logic, in theory increasing the overall quality of submitted leads.

Snapchat is joining the ad-free subscription party.
Social Media Today published a nice infographic with a quick summary of Email Marketing best practices.